A/N: Written for season 3 of the 2016 Pro-Bending Circuit.

Challenge: write a story that occurs between the end of AtLA and the start of LoK

Prompts: "I feel like I'm stuck between a rock and a hard place" (easy), Suki (medium), plot – after a misunderstanding, friends become enemies (hard)

Word Count: 1003 words (excluding author's notes)

Disclaimer: ATLA/LOK are property of Bryke forevermore, all characters and settings mentioned herein belong to them.

When She Left

"Get out of my way."

Her voice is sharp, resolute, and the fan in her hand snaps open with a defiant click. Her armour weighs down on her on this stifling hot day, but beneath it her spine is straight and she stands tall.

"Don't do this," he pleads. "Suki, please…"

"I'm not going to say it again," Suki cuts him off flatly. The thick makeup daubed on her face only makes the expression on her face more forbidding, more terrifying.

"Can't we at least talk about this?"

"Talk about what?" she demands. She speaks quietly, but he can still hear the iron behind her words. "How you think I'm blind and a fool?"

He sputters incoherently, thrusting the boomerang in his hand back into its holster on his belt.

"I see you, you know! Don't think I don't! She's like my sister. And you're flirting with her, and she's flirting with you, and it just – it just makes me sick –"

"Is that what this is about?" he queries incredulously, rubbing a hand against his forehead. "Suki, I – I didn't – I never –"

"Oh, save it," Suki interrupts him wearily. She leans into an aggressive stance, weapons at the ready. "You could at least preserve your dignity by coming clean about it. It's okay, I've accepted it. You have wandering eyes and I'm not putting up with that anymore."

"Suki, I'm telling the truth, I swear! I only have eyes for you –"

"You liar."

He moves his head out of the way just in time as one of her fans whirs past him. It slices off a strand of his hair with deadly accuracy.

"You liar," Suki repeats, breathing heavily. "Do you really think you can fool me now? I know that girls follow you around, they throw themselves at you. Why wouldn't they? You're the new chief of the Southern Water Tribe, you're a great warrior, you're the Avatar's friend, you're strong and handsome and funny…"

She spits each word as though it's a curse.

"But it doesn't mean anything!" He protests. "I swear, I just – I don't know how else to deal with them!"

"Right. And you didn't spend half the evening fawning over Ty Lee last night?" Her voice takes on a high-pitched, mocking tone as she continues, "hey Ty Lee, it's been a while, you just keep looking better and better, have you been doing something with your hair, it looks even shinier than before, you're still with the Kyoshi warriors, they're keeping you in good shape, huh, what about the circus, are you in touch with them?"

"I was just making small talk!"

"For that long?"

"Well, you were talking to Zuko the whole time, and I didn't know anyone else at the party!"

"Mai was there, you could have talked to her!"

"I hate talking to Mai, you know that! And she was mad that Zuko was talking with you, I wasn't about to get in her way!"

"What's that supposed to mean?" Suki's eyes have narrowed and she jams her hands on her hips.

"Nothing! I'm just saying that I could easily turn around and get mad at you for spending a lot of time with Zuko last night too…but I'm not because I know you two are just friends." He pauses. "The way Ty Lee and I are just friends."

Suki lets out a scoff.

"You have some nerve, trying to turn around and blame me," she points out. "For your information, Zuko's been alone and isolated, more and more so ever since he took the throne. You and Katara and Aang all strung him out to dry at the first sign of trouble – some friends you are, deserting him when he needed you the most! Mai doesn't even know how to be a good girlfriend period, let alone consort to the Fire Lord! Even his uncle went away to make tea in Ba Sing Se! So excuse me if I felt he needed a friend more than you needed yet another girlfriend!"

"She is not my girlfriend," he insists. "You are!"

"I was," Suki corrects.

"Suki, please don't do this. We can work this out, we always do…"

"Do we?" Suki demands. "Or do we just keep having the same argument over and over again? First it was that Northern Water Tribe girl they kept trying to set you up with, then it was that Earth Kingdom princess, then you even went and hit it off with Toph, of all people – !"

"I thought we were done with that! Toph is like a sister to me –"

"And Ty Lee is like a sister to me," Suki barrels over him. "Doesn't seem to stop you, though. Nothing does. Maybe it's just not meant to be with us. I feel like I'm stuck between a rock and a hard place. You like being liked too much, and it…it brings out the worst in me."

"I don't mind," he tells her desperately. "I don't care if we fight, I just want to be with you –"

"I don't," she says. "I'm tired of being this person. Of constantly watching you joke around with other girls, and wondering what they have that I don't, and getting worked up over tiny, insignificant things. I'm tired, Sokka."

Sokka looks as though she's delivered a sucker punch to his gut. In a way, she has.

"But I love you," he chokes out. "I'll always love you."

"And I'll always love you," Suki replies, with only the slightest hitch in her voice. "I'll never forget you, Sokka. You were my first love. But…we want different things in life. And it's wrong to try change those parts of ourselves, to be dishonest with ourselves, for the people we love."

She snaps her fan shut, tucks it into her sleeve, and hoists her bag onto her shoulder, before stepping toward him, and then past him.

"I'll never meet another girl like you, Suki," Sokka confesses.

"I know," Suki says. "Goodbye, Sokka."

A/N: Apologies for the cheese, folks. I wrote this in under an hour. Thanks for reading!